Journal

Volume 11, Issue 1 (January 31, 2010)

5 articles

• Introduction: Reading Development and Reading Disorders in Asian Languages
  by Greg B. Simpson
  J. CS. 2010, 11(1), 1-5;
  Abstract (No Abstract)Paragraph 1:The articles in this special edition of the Journal of Cognitive Science grew partly out of a symposium at the 2008 meeting of the International Congress of Cognitive Science (ICCS), held in Seoul, Korea. At that symposium, several papers were presented tha... [Read more].
  Abstract (No Abstract)Paragraph 1:The articles in this special edition of the Journal of Cognitive Science grew partly out of a symposium at the 2008 meeting of the International Congress of Cognitive Science (ICCS), held in Seoul, Korea. At that symposium, several papers were presented that considered issues of reading development and reading disorders in East Asian languages. [Collapse]
• Spelling Development in Thai Children
  by Heather Winskel
  J. CS. 2010, 11(1), 7-35;
  Abstract Thai, a tonal language, has a distinctive alphabetic orthography. In the current study, spelling development in Thai children is examined. A number of predictions about spelling development and types of errors are made based on previous research on other orthographies in conjunction with the charact... [Read more].
  Abstract Thai, a tonal language, has a distinctive alphabetic orthography. In the current study, spelling development in Thai children is examined. A number of predictions about spelling development and types of errors are made based on previous research on other orthographies in conjunction with the characteristics of Thai language and its orthography. Spelling of words was assessed in 60 Thai children ranging in age from 7 years to 9 years from Grade(s) 1, 2, and 3. After 4 months of school, Grade 1 children achieved 32% correct, Grade 2 children 85% correct, and Grade 3 children 87% correct for word spelling. Spelling performance rapidly increased between the youngest Grade 1 children and the older children with relatively few errors made by the older children. We found striking commonalities with other orthographies previously studied and also orthography-specific characteristics emerged. Homophonous consonants, consonant clusters, visually similar letters, vowel length, and other irregularities in the orthography posed significant challenges to young learners. As predicted the complex vowel combinations and tone system also proved problematic. [Collapse]
• Understanding Chinese Dyslexia
  by Wen Xiao & Him Cheung
  J. CS. 2010, 11(1), 37-56;
  Abstract Reading and writing are inevitably affected by the features of the orthography in question. This paper aims to examine the manifestation and causes of dyslexia in logographic Chinese. Studies to date have suggested that phonological processing skills are associated with reading difficulties in Chine... [Read more].
  Abstract Reading and writing are inevitably affected by the features of the orthography in question. This paper aims to examine the manifestation and causes of dyslexia in logographic Chinese. Studies to date have suggested that phonological processing skills are associated with reading difficulties in Chinese as they are in other writing systems. In addition, Chinese dyslexics also appear to be impaired on orthographic processing and rapid naming. In particular, they show difficulties in using knowledge about the internal structures of Chinese characters to read unfamiliar and infrequent words. It is therefore likely that deficits in both orthographic and phonological processing are responsible for reading failure in Chinese. [Collapse]
• Transfer of Phonological and Morphological Awareness to Reading in English and Logographic Hanja among Korean Children
  by Jeung-Ryeul Cho & Jee-Young Lee
  J. CS. 2010, 11(1), 57-78;
  Abstract This study examined differential contributions of Korean phonological and morphological processing skills to reading and spelling across Korean Hangul, logographic Hanja, and English among 107 sixth graders in Korea. In regression equations, after controlling for vocabulary and phonological awarenes... [Read more].
  Abstract This study examined differential contributions of Korean phonological and morphological processing skills to reading and spelling across Korean Hangul, logographic Hanja, and English among 107 sixth graders in Korea. In regression equations, after controlling for vocabulary and phonological awareness, both number naming speed and morpheme judgment accounted for unique variance in Hangul word reading and spelling. Korean phoneme awareness explained unique variance in reading and spelling skills in English, but not in Hanja. In addition, Korean morphological awareness was found to predict reading in both Hanja and English. It is thus suggested that phonological and morphological awareness, which are both language-general abilities, transfer to reading skills across languages and writing systems. [Collapse]
• The Effects of Properties of the Radicals in Radical Migration Phenomena
  by H. Saito, G.B. Flores d’Arcais, M. Kawakami, & H. Masuda
  J. CS. 2010, 11(1), 79-127;
  Abstract Illusory conjunctions of letters have been observed with words presented in alphabetic writing systems. The work here reported investigates a related phenomenon, "radical blending," that may occur during the processing of kanji, the Japanese logographic script. In this work, we presented participant... [Read more].
  Abstract Illusory conjunctions of letters have been observed with words presented in alphabetic writing systems. The work here reported investigates a related phenomenon, "radical blending," that may occur during the processing of kanji, the Japanese logographic script. In this work, we presented participants with two briefly exposed "source" characters (e.g., 複 浴), each of which contained two components or "radicals." These characters were subsequently masked, and then followed by a probe character (e.g., 裕) that, under critical conditions, shared one or two radicals with the source characters. Participants were asked to decide as quickly as possible if the probe was one of the two source characters. We found that the probability of participants to erroneously report that they had seen the probe in the source pair (i.e., produce a false positive response) was related primarily to some consistency between the source and the probe characters. This included the position of the same radicals in the source and in the probe characters (local consistency) and the left or right position of the characters in the source display (global consistency). Homophony between source characters and the probe character also played some roles. The results suggest that, in processing kanji characters, readers are sensitive to statistical properties of radicals, such as the number of radicals taking left or right position, and the number of their pronunciations. [Collapse]